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Wednesday, 7 September 2011

Tool- Sober

Director: Fred Stuhr

Tool are an American rock band formed in the 1990's in LA. Initially with a much heavier sound, their sound seems to have mellowed out somewhat over the years. So far they have released four albums over the 20+ years active, with each member having multiple other pursuits. Like the singer is involved with two other bands and enjoys making wine in his spare time. The 10,000 Days(2006) album isn't just notable for its music however, the album art is in 3D, requiring the use of (packaged) Stereoscopic glasses to view 3D artwork by Alex Grey.

An image of the humanoid
opening the box

What make's this video interesting is the stop motion used, showing a simple humanoid kinda figure walking in a fairly decayed house. The opening shots are POV shots from, something behind a panel or door, giving a basic run down of the location. It builds up that early sense of mystery in this respect, several tracking shots going through the corridors of the place, or following a rusted pipe along the walls.

In some clips we have some brief overlaid shots of various members of the band preforming, more frequent/ noticeable towards the end. The humanoid thing seems to live alone in a single room, until it finds a box and sees something that's never shown to the audience, but it clearly has a strong effect on the creature, how's chair seems to be levitating. The video gets weirder, with various other creatures seen, each more twisted than the last, some covered in darkness and others standing in an open room. The box is one of the main points of the video with close-ups to drive that point, lots of shots where the camera goes into the box or seems to be peaking out in Tarantino-esq shots.